Exhibition Review IV: Thanksgiving Trip to Salt Lake City, Utah: Tillman Crane's Jordan River Photographs at the Salt Lake Art Center

Tillman Crane, Swimming Hole, 2006.

With little knowledge of Salt Lake City, much less its contemporary art scene, other than Joseph Smith’s spiritual revelations, polygamy, and ornate Mormon temples, I was intrigued to make the eleven-hour drive to my best friend’s Utah home for the Thanksgiving holiday. Admittedly skeptical about critical, radical art produced in the city where most of its inhabitants don conservative, white undergarments under their clothing as a symbolic reminder of the sacred covenants of Mormonism and as a literal source of protection from the world’s evils, I ventured to the Salt Lake Art Center to view their current exhibitions, located just a block from the central Mormon temple from which all streets in Salt Lake radiate outward. Its mission statement claiming to “encourage contemporary visual artists and art which challenge and educate public perceptions of civil, social and aesthetic issues affecting society,” I suspected that should analytical and engaging artwork be found in Salt Lake, it would likely be at the Art Center.

Entering the photography exhibit of contemporary writer and artist, Tillman Crane, I was surrounded by a plethora of images concerning one of Utah’s most vital waterways, the Jordan River. Former mayor of Salt Lake City and now current Director of the Utah Rivers Council, Ted Wilson, coincidentally happens to be my best friend’s stepfather, and educated me on the river’s redemptive history throughout our walk through of the exhibit. Originally marking the boundary between civilization and the rugged unknown of the west, the Jordan River quickly became polluted and unusable in the age of industrial revolution and Mormon settlement in the early 1900s. It was not until the 1970s that a series of laws enacted under the Environmental Protection Agency led to gradual cleanup and protection of the Jordan. Crane’s photographs document the Jordan River from its source at Utah Lake to its mouth at the Great Salt Lake. In most of the photographs, Crane depicts the river in its natural state, while in others there is evidence of human interruption, engineering, and re-routing. Crane works with large format cameras to produce palladium prints that appear metallic and slightly washed out, lending an air of mysticism to the photographs.

In the photograph, Swimming Hole, Redwood Road (2006), Tillman’s camera captures a warped, twisting tree overlooking a spot of the river frequented for summer swimming sessions. Heavy contrast evades the image, the river’s water and fallen branches pervading its ripples falling almost transparent behind the dark tree in the foreground. The photograph appears calm and still with little movement depicted in the river or the tree’s leaves, providing the viewer with a serene scene of a local haunt. Tillman presents the Jordan River in a nostalgic, inspiring way akin to most previous and contemporary art photography. Swimming Hole immediately reminded me of monumental photographs by early photographers such as Edward Weston and Ansel Adams concerned with providing the spectator a grandiose view of America’s magnificent geography. As Abigail Solomon-Godeau notes in her essay, Photography After Art Photography, photographic works by artists such as Weston and Adams present “an auratic image” not invested in art’s role in institutional or representational critique, but rather, in framing “an intrinsic, aesthetic field.” Swimming Hole, while pleasant to look at, in my opinion is not an interesting or unique image. The photograph is beautiful and the use of palladium to provide the river a glowing, silver tint is aesthetically pleasing, but does not challenge the viewer in terms of “public perceptions of civil, social and aesthetic issues affecting society,” as the Salt Lake Art Center claims its exhibitions to do. The photograph quickly fades from memory as the visually striking image provides nothing critical to think about, and thus, nothing worth remembering after the exhibition.

Ansel Adams, Siesta Lake, 1958.

Edward Weston, Juniper, Tenaya Lake, 1937.

Tillman’s photograph titled Trestle Bridge (2008), while shot in similar style and produced with the same metallic sheen as Swimming Hole, is aesthetically more interesting in terms of diagonal lines captured in the scene. The photograph presents a steel, rather industrial-looking bridge stretching above the Jordan River, whose diagonal line parallels that a concrete embankment nearby, graffiti scribbled across its surface. In the background, trees and brush huddled around the water’s edge mingle with the distant Wasatch mountains and Utah skyline, creating a dichotomy between man-made materials and those of nature. Viewed in light of a possible commentary or analysis of the artificial and imposed on the native, Trestle Bridge slightly ventures into the realm of, what Solomon-Godeau describes as, photography after art photography, or photography used in postmodernist art to critique or draw attention to a system of representation. However, the work ultimately fails at escaping categorization as an auratic image, for any critical analysis gleamed from the work is ultimately the viewer’s own, the photograph produced to monumentalize the Jordan River and its beautiful attributes, rather than to make analytical commentary.

Tillman Crane, Trestle Bridge, 2008.

The distinction between avant-garde photography and art photography, states Solomon-Godeau, “lies in the former’s potential for institutional and/or representational critique, analysis, or address, and the latter’s deep-seated inability to acknowledge any need to even think about such matters.” It is clear that Tillman’s photographs of the Jordan River are concerned with the harmony and elegance of the image over stimulating analysis. While visiting the Salt Lake Art Center provided a leisurely break from the often stressful atmosphere of the winter holidays, Tillman’s works, sadly, failed to impress upon me Salt Lake City as a place producing interesting and radical art, and instead, as producing conservative, “pretty” work suitable for the Mormon viewer’s eyes.

The Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery: National Print Exhibition

Wandering through Barnsdale Park in Los Feliz this past weekend, I stumbled upon an enormous printmaking exhibition at the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery. Celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Los Angeles Printmaking Society and featuring work from local Otis College students, the show displayed over 150 contemporary prints of multiple processes, including serigraphy, lithography, and intaglio. Of notable interest in the artworks presented were prints by two artists, JenClare B. Gawaran and Poli Marichal. Although different stylistically, I felt that these two artists' works communicated with one another through addressing similar themes of identity and character.

Gawaran’s print, titled “Manika,” presents the torso of a female body, holding up a paper-chain link of different women (fig. 1). Upon closer inspection, one realizes that the women actually represent the same person dressed in different clothing, such as the scrubs of a doctor, or a traditional Filipina dress. Whether or not the woman depicted in the paper-chain link is herself, it is clear that Gawaran is exploring issues of identity through the multiple representations of the same figure in different suits. Gawaran’s artist statement presented on her website emphasizes her interest in cross or multiple identities, as she remarks, “As an Asian-American, my current work splits the phrase and myself into two separate identities. My goal is to discover aspects of my background that I previously took for granted, as well as to see how I conform (or not) to traditional Filipino customs and expectations.” Manika may be an insight into Gawaran’s anxieties concerning what role she must play in society as both Filipina and American.

Marichal’s print, titled “Vigilia,” similarly represents a certain cultural identity as does the work of Gawaran, but concerns Latin Americans. Standing atop a tall rock, a lone wolf stands quietly, seemingly content with his position as a slight grin crawls across his face. In contrast, cowering beneath the rock is a family attempting to sleep, a child huddled listlessly near its mother’s chest. A water jug in front of the male figure suggests the family has been traveling or hiding for a long period of time, and have now finally closed their eyes out of exhaustion. The difference between the calm, content wolf and the weary, tired family below are indicative, perhaps, of the Latin American immigrant experience as one that is draining and dangerous, a “wolf” constantly on one’s heels. As a Puerto Rican artist, Marichal is likely calling attention to the identity of the nomadic immigrant, never quite at home or at peace in a strange country. This lost, or fragmented identity is portrayed through the exhausted faces of the sleeping family. The prints of both Gawaran and Marichal consider cultural identities and the anxieties or difficulties associated with being the “other.”

Exhibition Review III: Monster Drawing Rally 2009, The Outpost for Contemporary Art

This past Sunday, community members of North East Los Angeles ventured to the Eagle Rock Center for the Arts to witness artists producing their crafts. An exhibition whose proceeds supported the Outpost for Contemporary Art, a non-profit devoted to cross-cultural exchange and local artist collaborations by developing artistic projects that stimulate social interaction and emphasize process, the Monster Drawing Rally featured a live drawing event consisting of four, one-hour shifts with 25 contemporary Los Angeles artists creating work simultaneously each hour. As the artworks were completed, they were displayed on the gallery walls for viewing and purchase. Far from a traditional gallery show, the spectators watched 100 artists draw, paint, collage, and silkscreen in rapid succession in a sort of controlled artistic chaos that was invigorating and fascinating to view.

Walking in between clusters of slightly intoxicated guests to the circle of tables where the artists produced their works under the curious eyes of spectators, I was quickly drawn to the paintings of a young artist, Jessica Minckley. A recent Otis College graduate whose work has been shown at LA Louver in Venice as well as Carl Berg Gallery where she held her first solo exhibition, I watched as Minckley dipped her brush in vibrant watercolors to paint text and drawings over torn pages from an antique book. Describing her work as recontextualized found objects that are “sentimentally charged” with spiritual or psychological suggestions, her works appear deeply personal and intimate, as if the viewer is allowed to peek into Minckley’s thoughts and ponderings on old words written on a yellowed page. An example of such work is a piece titled “Without Representation,” in which Minckley draws swirling, delicate lines that come to create a circle on an old book page displaying the words of an Arab proverb: “Happy who has seen the most water in life.” The blue lines appear as a musing on the proverb, their flowing quality seeming to move like water, and their circular shape indicating some type of constant, ongoing eternity. The work appears peaceful and somewhat mysterious, as it is up to the viewer to ultimately make sense of the combination of Minckley’s drawing mixed with the previous words on the page. A seemingly hermetic process that depends on her own inner perceptions, interests, and vocabulary inspired or conjured by the text on the book page, Minckley’s work displays quietude and introspection.

Jessica Minckley, Without Representation.

Leaving Minckley’s table in a surreal, pensive state, I floated towards the table featuring artist Brian Bress, whom I found hunched over a stack of magazines, feverishly cutting away. An artist that works in many mediums including photography and video (which he described as “mindless dabblings”), Bress’s comment and collages reminded me of surrealist works by Max Ernst in which he would unconsciously mix and match images of old etchings and mass culture advertisements to create bizarre works that leave the viewer to wander through their absurd complexities without ever really finding a clear meaning through the cuts and clippings. In Bress’s collage, “D.B.,” a portrait of a woman is covered in long, cut up images of flowers, vines, and tree branches to create a biological veil that covers her face. Bress also places more vine-like, crawling collage pieces at the bottom of the work, which stand stiffly as menacing knifes. Rather than a candid image of a beautiful woman, Bress’s interference complicates and disrupts the original photograph, displacing its original signification with added, disjointed collage pieces. While the original intent of the image of the woman is still intact, it is complicated through Bress’s manipulation. As the viewer attempts to negotiate between the woman and the tangle of vines and bark in front of her, the images, while distinct, must be read through each other, thus confusing the relationship of either image to its signifier. Bress’s collages strike me as similar to a surrealist or post-modern exploration into found images and their intentions, and the frustration or anxiety of the viewer when s/he cannot read the collage in any given way.

Max Ernst, Untitled.

Brian Bress, D.B.

Lastly, I would like to describe the work of an artist I stumbled upon before exiting the Monster Drawing Rally. Stuck in the corner table next to a plethora of large sound equipment, Sarajo Frieden sat with her drawing pencils spayed out on the table, creating tiny geometric shapes which she then connect together with embroidery thread. In Frieden’s work is the element of the handicraft, as she frequently implements sewing and needlework into her canvases. As she noted in her artist statement displayed at the Monster Drawing Rally, the location of her Los Angles studio, situated between Little Armenia and Koreatown, acts as “a host of disparate vocabularies from the worlds of fine, folk, and decorative art,” the influence of which can be seen in her folktale, narrative works. In her work, “Landscape 1,” Frieden depicts a fairytale vista in which multi-colored cloud forms emit rays of intricate, embroidered patterns. Geometric mountains and hills sprout from the ground while other indeterminate, yet seemingly fitting abstracted shapes float calmly throughout the piece. The cacophony of color, shape, and line draw attention to the simple landscape as one that is not realistic, but created through the hand of an artist who experiences different languages, cultures, and histories on a daily basis. Watching Frieden work was almost as mystifying as one of her drawings, as she held most all of her pencils in one hand, and appeared to scribble rapidly, as a child would, onto paper to make her artwork. Her dreamlike creation, along with the works of Minckley and Bress, cemented my afternoon as a transportation into the minds of other human beings, and their consequent views of the surrounding world.

Sarajo Frieden, Landscape I.